人同河一樣。
天下的水都是一樣的，可是每條河有時窄，流得急；有時寬，流得平穩；有時混濁，有時澄清；有時涼，有時暖。
人也是一樣，人人身上都有人類品性的根苗。
不過，有時這種品性流露出來，有時那種品性流露出來罷了。
人往往變得不像他自己了，其實，他仍然是他原來的那個人
—列夫
One of the commonest and most generally accepted delusions is that every man can be qualified in some particular way -- said to be kind, wicked, stupid, energetic, apathetic, and so on.
People are not like that. We may say of a man that he is more often kind than cruel, more often wise than stupid, more often energetic than apathetic or vice versa; but it could never be true to say of one man that he is kind or wise, and of another that he is wicked or stupid. Yet we are always classifying mankind in this way. And it is wrong.
Human beings are like rivers; the water is one and the same in all of them but every river is narrow in some places, flows swifter in others; here it is broad, there still, or clear, or cold, or muddy or warm.
It is the same with men. Every man bears within him the germs of every human quality, and now manifests one, now another, and frequently is quite unlike himself, while still remaining the same man.
Leo Tolstoy